The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  “Why do you compare me to a vicious Oriental beast of burden?” she inquired, and she stood up.

  “Will you sit down, Naomi!” I cried. “And please lift up your veil. In our day,” I could not help adding, “veils were worn only by Catholic ladies when in mourning. You’re not Catholic and you are incapable of mourning for anybody. Besides, you never knew your family. . . . I asked you what sort of a young man you had married, and I wish you’d be civil enough to follow the rules of conversation, or bid me good morning.”

  Then I heard her words as clear as a gong: “A while back you throwed up to me in your nasty lady-way my age, and now you go into my dress, when these is the points you rest weakest on yourself, for you know as well as I that you are crowding eighty and that you never wore a stitch of clothes yet that couldn’t be snapped up by the freak show.”

  “How dare you,” I cried. “Speak so to a woman who provided you with your bread for twenty years!”

  “And your advanced age, technically you are a ancient, and your odd getups are the least of it, for I won’t mention nobody in and around this suite has ever thought you was anything but harmless-crazy! There!” she cried, and she got up and moved around the room to touch her glove on the windowsill and pretended to find dirt.

  “Your house is filthy since I left you and you know it!” Naomi went on after a long wait on my part. “And don’t you use the expression how-dare-you to me, ’cause I’m not in the mood for your old-fashioned smooth hellishness,” she added.

  “All right,” I soothed her, for I felt gravely ill, and told her I felt so. “You’ll fix me some tea,” I informed her, “and you’ll stay in case I have an attack. . . . Do you realize,” I admonished her, “what you’re doing to me? . . . You came here to kill me, in the cleverest way possible, and you know it.”

  “All you heiresses is tarred to the same stick: a honest day’s work with your hands would have told you the difference between loafing-fatigue and heart ailment. . . .”

  I sniffed at her words, said nothing more, and waited for her to prepare my tea. Naomi always prepared it so well, in fact she was a born cook, although of course I trained her. When she came to me she couldn’t boil water, as they say. I trained her indeed in everything, and I paid for two of her abortions. I was a second mother to her.

  “What do you pay this Norwegian charm woman works for you?” Naomi said, pouring me some tea.

  “Are you going to kill me if I don’t tell you, my dear?” I inquired of her.

  “I already know anyhow, Miss Smarty,” Naomi said.

  “Now, you look here,” I replied, getting really angry.

  “I seen your Norwegian up the street the other day.” Naomi ignored me. “Asked her right out after telling her who I was. She hesitated a minute and then she told me. I says, “That’s more than Mrs. Bankers paid me for a month backbreaking work.’”

  “You ate a great deal while here, Naomi, don’t forget,” I reminded her.

  “But here you are”—I could no longer contain myself—“at your old tricks of humiliating me in my own home!”

  “Don’t you work yourself up to that attack now, Mrs. Bankers, and then up and blame me; that’s about the size of it; you’d like to work yourself to a stroke here and have the police think I brought it on.”

  “I want to be your friend, Naomi, and as I said earlier, I’m ready to meet your young husband.”

  “He ain’t no youth, he’s over thirty,” she snapped at me. “You don’t think I want me a youth, do you, after all the trouble I got in with the others, which, as you like to remind the world, you was so good at helping me out in.”

  “I’ll meet him,” I said.

  “I never said one thing about bringing him.” She was as tart as ever.

  “Oh, Naomi, Naomi!” I cried.

  Then I heard myself saying it, after all the insults the slut had poured on me. I heard myself saying, “Why don’t you come back, Naomi?”

  Do you know what she did, she laughed so hard you would have thought somebody knocked the wind out of her the way she finally had to gasp for breath.

  “Oh, it’s not that funny.” I felt myself turning red.

  “You don’t care then I faded the rugs.” Naomi started in again on that.

  When I looked peaceable, she went on: “Let me tell you, Mrs. Bankers. I think them rugs was faded when you got them from your Great-Aunt Betty, or whoever give them to you. It come from the camels faded.”

  “How would you know the condition of heirlooms!” I shot at her.

  “ ’Cause I know myself, and I know when people fib about themselves to me.”

  “You have no self!” I retorted. “You’re a chameleon, and you’re color-blind!”

  “What did you say?” She became incoherent with rage, shouting at me.

  “Oh, forget it, why can’t you? I said to her. “I haven’t an ounce of prejudice and you know it.”

  She laughed her terrible put-on nasty laugh.

  “Naomi, Naomi,” I now appealed to her. “Why can’t you come to your senses and come back here to live? . . . That man you married surely can’t love you. . . . I’ll bet he’s living off you. . . . Tell me if I’m not speaking the truth.”

  She gave me a very queer look, then poured me some more tea.

  “Would you like me to fix you some toast, and open you a jar of some preserves. Noticed you had an unopened jar out there.”

  “Think somebody else with a well-known sweet tooth wants some preserves,” I said. “Go ahead, do all the things you just said you’d do, including the opening of the preserves,” I told her.

  I waited till she brought everything in. “Naomi,” I cried, “that is of course a wedding ring on your finger, let’s see.” She extended her hand and of course that was what it was, very nice gold in it, too.

  “I’m very put out you’re married,” I said.

  She laughed pleasantly.

  “Naomi, you should never have thrown that china pot at me that day,” I told her.

  “Now, now, Mrs. Bankers,” she cautioned, and she sat down again in that damned costume and veil of hers.

  “What nationality is this husband of yours, Naomi?” I ventured.

  “Cuban.”

  “White?” I wondered.

  “Oh, he’s got several strains in him, Mrs. Bankers, including a dash of Chinese.”

  “You would,” I sighed. “Well, it won’t last, and you’ll be back,” I chided.

  She fidgeted.

  “Matter of fact, Mrs. Bankers,” she began, and her face fell, “I’ll let you in on a secret. It ain’t lasted. It’s over. . . . Now clap your little hands with joy.”

  “Then, my love, unless my name’s not Mrs. Bankers, you’re here as a suppliant!”

  “As a what?”

  “You heard me. You’re here to beg your old job back when I no longer need you. When I’ve learned to get on without you!”

  “Beggin’! Hear her! Huh-huh, Mrs. Bankers, Naomi don’t have to beg, and you get that straight. I’m givin’ you a offer.”

  Wreathed in pleasurable smiles, happy as I had not been in months, I confess, I drank another cup of tea.

  “Tell you what,” Naomi said, cautious, sweet. “I’ll tell the tea leaves for you.”

  I hesitated, and she went on: “Bet that Norwegian bitch can’t do that. She sure can’t clean neither.” She looked at the woodwork.

  “You’ll be mean to me if you come back!” I cried. “And oh, Naomi, God Almighty, can you be mean. You’re the meanest woman ever drew breath when you are mean. . . . You’ve abused me sometimes until I thought I’d die. . . .”

  “Mrs. Bankers, stop it.”

  “Some nights,” I went right on, “I was in mortal fear you’d kill me.”

  “Monkey nuts!” she sneered. “I don’t believe you was ever in mortal fear of anything anyhow!”

  “Oh, Naomi, you’d persecute me if I let you back here, now you know you would. . . . Besides, maybe you
killed your young Cuban husband, how do I know?”

  “That little old punk isn’t worth killin’,” she mumbled.

  “But,” she went on, getting her ire up perhaps because she saw how I was smiling, “if you don’t want me back, Mrs. Bankers, you don’t and you know better than me that help like I can give is at a high bid today and scarcer than true love.”

  “Don’t rub it in, Naomi.” I felt myself bending. “Don’t lord it over me. You will anyhow. But I ask you not to. You’re cruel, and you’re in control. What more can I say?”

  “Honey, the day anybody is in control over you, they’ll have the spots took out of leopards.”

  “Oh, don’t be droll. You are anyhow. . . . God, I’ve missed your talk, Naomi. Sick to death of listening to foreigners. . . . Could your Cuban speak any known tongue outside of his own?”

  “We didn’t do much talking.” Naomi smiled.

  I stared at her, then merely said, “I expect not,” and sighed.

  I went on talking. “I’ve suffered so cruelly from insomnia since you went away,” and I shaded my eyes. “All night long night after night awake listening to the boat whistles.”

  “Nobody to rub your poor little head.” Naomi smiled.

  “Nobody to do anything for me! While you lay in the arms of that Cuban . . . Naomi, a thing has occurred to me, knowing your temper. . . . You didn’t kill him, did you? I won’t keep an escaped murderess in my home! Did you come here because you’ve killed him?”

  “I can see losin’ me ain’t changed you none, Mrs. Bankers. . . . Now hear my terms, dear heart. I’ll come back if you’ll sign a paper to the effect I never faded your rose rugs. . . .”

  I looked at her to indicate I knew she had gone completely out of her mind.

  “A little scrap of paper that I can keep,” she went right on, “in case you turn ugly again and bring the subject up at a inopportune time.”

  “Naomi, child, who put you up to this?” I controlled myself.

  “Did you ever know me to have to wait for somebody to put me up to anything, Mrs. Bankers? You must be losing your memory too!”

  “Well, then what do you want me to sign a paper for!” I screamed at her.

  She folded her arms, and oh the triumph on her mouth!

  “Because,” she went on, “I want an apology, that’s why. And without a apology, I don’t come back.”

  “Damn you, and damn your methods!” I cried, but I couldn’t put any force in my voice, and oh did she observe that.

  “What could I do with a old piece of paper that would simply say you, Celia Bankers, was mistaken in accusing Naomi Green of having faded your beautiful Portuguese rose rugs. With regret for having inconvenienced her, and then your signature.”

  Wiping my eyes, I said, “I’m surprised you wouldn’t demand also that I put the date and place of my birth so that I could be further humiliated by a servant! . . . So then this is your reason! You came back here not to apologize yourself and ask for your job back, but to humiliate me in my own home, remind me again, as is your insane habit, of my age, and having insulted me, leave me again to the mercies of these sweating snooty standoffish irresponsible foreigners! Oh, Naomi, why did I ever take you in. Why did I ever set eyes on you, I hate you. . . . Now, get out. You’ve had your sweet revenge.”

  “Now, now, sweetheart.” She was as cool as a mountain spring, and took my cup out to the kitchen, got a fresh bigger one, filled it with strong hot tea, and put more bread in the toaster.

  “Did your Cuban lover send you here to blackmail me?” I inquired, taking the tea.

  “Don’t try to change the subject, Mrs. Bankers.”

  “I won’t write any absurd note abdicating from my natural rights and dignity so that you can show my statements to your lovers and laugh at me behind my back!”

  “Miss Bankers! I’m warning you!”

  “I’ll never sign, you slut! Never.”

  “Miss Bankers, I’m going to have to punish you if you don’t quit carryin’ on like this.”

  “All the time I needed you and had to trust my person, my affairs, my very health and life to these no-account foreigners, you were lying in bed with a man and having to pay him for his favors to you! Don’t interrupt me! That’s how old you are now, and don’t think I don’t know it. You have to pay for it now at your age. You always have acted as if I knew nothing of the world. I know everything, you fool.”

  “Eat your toast and shut your mouth, Mrs. Bankers. I’m in no need of seeing you in one of your fits of hysterics, and I won’t put up with it. You need me, you need me bad, you need me so bad I could make you take all your clothes off and crawl on hands and knees on your old faded carpets and say, ‘Naomi! Come home!’ ”

  “Yes, my carpets”—I looked down at them—“which of course I faded myself, or they came from the camels faded.”

  I began to cry hard then.

  “I’m not taken in by your bawlin’,” she scoffed.

  “I didn’t expect you to be.” I blew my nose, and got really angry again. “A black whore like you.”

  Naomi laughed, and began waltzing around the room.

  “Don’t break anything now because you’ll have to stay and work it out for nothing, remember.”

  “I’ll stay as soon as you sign that paper.”

  Coming over to the little Italian marble-topped table on which her teacup and jam rested, Naomi put down a blank sheet of linen paper, with a quill pen, copiously dipped.

  “Take that paper and pen away, you low conniving creature!” I cried, but I’m afraid I showed no force or decision.

  “I’ll raise your pay,” I said suddenly.

  “You bet you will, Mrs. Bankers.”

  “I’ll never sign, though.”

  “I’ve never told a soul how old you are, and you know it,” Naomi said.

  “You don’t know how old I am.” I raised my voice now.

  “And I never told nobody you was a bona fide virgin either, and had never been married. I never even told anybody your real name.”

  I laid my head back against the velvet of the chair and said, “Go ahead, blackmail me.”

  “I’ve been faithful to you, Mrs. Bankers, and you know it.”

  “I won’t sign your paper. If I signed it, you’d make me sign more, sign my life away to you.”

  “I won’t let you off the hook just the same. I have my pride about them rugs. You told everybody I faded them. It hurt my standing.”

  “With whom, pray tell!” I demanded.

  “The doormen,” she said, after thinking for quite a while.

  “Those drunken Irish idiots! A lame excuse coming from you!”

  There was a long, terrible silence, and then I said, “Go back to your Cuban lover. . . . I’ll stay here and die with foreigners.”

  “If I go this time, Mrs. Bankers, I ain’t never coming back.”

  I began crying again, and Naomi could see she had scared me good.

  “You’ve humiliated me for twenty years.” I had to take the handkerchief she offered me, my own was useless by now.

  Naomi folded her arms and sat down.

  “You have no respect for me, you’ve never acted like I was your employer, and you’ve blackmailed me over the years because you know my correct age and that I was never married. You also know my real name. . . . So what can I do? . . . You and your likes are taking over. I’m a prisoner in my own house and nation!”

  “Rotgut! Mrs. Bankers, and you know it.”

  Then she took my hand, put the pen in it, and held my hand to the paper.

  I pretended to scream.

  “If you don’t sign in two seconds, I’m going out that door and never darken it again, and you can go ahead with your threat to die with them Norwegians and Croats.”

  “But I don’t even know what to write!” I appealed to her.

  “Write this,” she said: “. . . I, Celia Bankers, confess I wrongfully accused my maid of twenty years’ standing, Miss Naomi
Green, of having faded my beautiful rose Portuguese carpets, causing her as a result to lose face with the people who run this building and to look bad in general, whereas my carpets were already faded before Naomi got here.”

  I had written all the words dutifully and then handed the sheet of paper to Naomi.

  “God Almighty, you wrote it!” she said.

  I looked at the wall. I was very pale.

  Suddenly, hearing the tearing sounds, I looked up. Naomi had torn up what I had just written.

  “My dear child,” I cried, extending my right arm toward her.

  Naomi kneeled down, and I caressed her hair in the folds of my skirt.

  “I’ve been just wonderful to you from the start, Mrs. Bankers, and you got to admit it.”

  “Do you want me to sign a paper to that effect also?” I wondered. “For I may as well while the pen is still wet with ink. . . .”

  “Now, now.” Naomi stirred under my fingers.

  “Oh, Naomi, how I hate foreigners. I never want one of them to touch me again as long as I live. . . . You’re so beautiful, after all, child.” I patted Naomi’s cheek. “You’re a black rose.” I kissed her hair. “I’d sign anything, I guess, to have you back.”

  Naomi giggled.

  “To think though you got married, and to a Cuban who’s of course black,” I said. “How inconsiderate you have always been. Naomi, you are a fool.”

  Naomi jerked her head up from my lap.

  “Now what have I said?” I cried, on seeing the look of flashing anger in Naomi’s eyes. “I declare you don’t know how to behave for more than five minutes at a time. . . . Lie still, and don’t get so excited, Naomi. . . . After all, my dear, if you were a big enough fool to come back here, I’m a bigger one to let you.”

  MR. EVENING

  “You were asking the other day, Pearl, what that very tall young Mr. Evening—the one who goes past the house so often—does for a living, and I think I’ve found out for you,” Mrs. Owens addressed her younger sister from her chair loaded with hand-sewn cushions.